“Yeah, I do,” I agreed, matching the anger in his tone with my own. “I have to be familiar with death, and it was you that introduced us. I had to stare at it every day, regardless. So I thought, maybe if I learned to look it in the eye the way it was staring at me, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.”
“And did it work?”
“What the fuck do you think, Liam?” I hissed.
He didn’t answer. Instead he snatched my neck and kissed me.
He ripped off all our clothes.
Chapter Twenty
“Caroline,” Hansen greeted me with five pale, angular, muscled and very well-dressed men beside him. “We have some important guests here tonight. I assume you’ll take care of them?”
I nodded, figuring they were Russian even before they greeted me in heavy accents. I knew it because they spoke Russian before they spoke in English. They talked about how it was a shame I wasn’t showing enough tit. Then placed bets on who would be fucking me tonight.
With or without my approval, apparently.
I wasn’t overtly worried, mostly because of Liam’s murderous gaze from across the room. It was foolish to feel protected by him, but I was making a lot of foolish decisions lately.
The fact he drove me home from the bar every single night and spent the rest of it fucking me into oblivion told me that the Russians weren’t going to get their chance.
I smiled and got their drinks, not letting on I understood them.
It wouldn’t pay to start a conflict with the men I guessed were responsible for supplying the Sons of Templar with their main source of income.
Plus, I was a witness. I wasn’t meant to interfere.
Even though I’d already done that two days ago with the detective. And it turned out I was right, he got a deposit into his account from an overseas company a month ago. The month that he reopened the file on the Sons of Templar, New Mexico.
Fernandez was trying to bring them down from both sides of the law.
It was closing in. I could feel it.
And I didn’t think the presence of the Russians that joked about raping me meant anything good.
It was toward the end of the night, when vodka had loosened their tongues that I heard it. Most of their talk was centered around women. That was disturbing.
But not the most disturbing thing.
It took everything in me not to react when I heard it. I continued putting away glasses and pouring vodka like I wasn’t hearing them discuss the end of The Sons of Templar.
They moved away when they were done to share a beer with the men they planned on having killed.
It was then that I calmly walked to the bathroom in the back, locked the door and vomited.
After emptying my stomach, I rinsed my mouth and regarded myself in the mirror. I was a journalist. It was not my place to take sides. It was the exact defining quality of my profession. Identity. Objectivity.
But I was lying to myself if my objectivity went out the window since I came face to face with Liam.
I had a decision to make. Let this war play itself out, stand on the sidelines and watch it do so. Record the story.
Or insert myself into it. Step onto the battlefield and choose a side.
Liam didn’t even give me a chance to speak when I got off the bike, the rest of the club had ridden with us, all of them staying till close, which was unusual. Sometimes Claw and Elden stayed with Liam. Blake was usually passed out on the table before he woke up, found a club girl and disappeared. But I guessed the Russians meant business.
No. I knew they did.
Liam took off my helmet, brushing my hair from my face. “We’ve got church, Peaches,” he said softly. “Club business.”
I nodded. I didn’t speak.
I watched them filter into the room and the door close.
I stood in the middle of the common room for twenty seconds. Fighting with what I’d heard, what that meant I should do. It meant I should do nothing, that I should go back into the bedroom and log it into my laptop, let the story unfold without any more of my meddling.
Then I burst into church.
“They’re ripping you off. The Russians.” I blurt it before I realized what I was doing. I’m traveling outside of the role that has assured my survival and journalistic integrity for well over a decade.
Hansen held up his hand to whoever is behind me, likely about to drag me from the sacred room. “How do you know that?
“Because they said it plainly, right in front of you all,” I replied, not sure if I was impressed or disgusted at the fact they were as brash as to talk about the fact that they were fucking the Sons of Templar over while they smiled and slapped their backs, sharing beers with them.